Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

Venezuela is on a rapid and precipitous decline. You might even say, as my guest today Francisco Toro wrote in a recent piece in the Atlantic that Venezuela is falling apart. Between food, fuel, medicine and commodity shortages, corruption and rampant crime, this one-time middle income country is struggling mightily. There's an incipient humanitarian crisis and instability of Valenzuela could effect the entire region. Fransisco Toro is the proprietor of the blog Caracas Chronicles and co-authored the Atlantic piece, with Moises Naim, who many of you probably know and was a guest on this very show last year. The piece very succinctly describes the causes and consequences of Venezuela's collapse and begins with an very telling anecdote about toilet paper.

Jennifer Harris has devoted much of her career to studying what she calls "geo-economics," -- the ability of countries to shape world politics, diplomacy, and global affairs more broadly through the deployment of economic means. She's a Council on Foreign Relations Fellow and co-author, with Robert Blackwill, of the new book War By Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft. Jennifer grew up near an artillery range in Oklahoma and became fascinated with economics from a young age. She was a Rhodes Scholar and worked in the State Department under both Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton. And it was working in the Clinton State Department that Jennifer lead the development of Secretary Clinton's Economics and Statecraft agenda, which was rolled out in 2011. And towards the end of the interview we discuss what it was like working with Hillary Clinton, who more likely than not will be the next US president. And we also have an illuminating conversation about the bureaucratic politics that goes into crafting a new kind of foreign policy agenda.

Senator Chris Murphy wants to change a bedrock relationship in US foreign policy. In April this year he introduced legislation to restrict arms sales to Saudi Arabia over that country's conduct in the war in Yemen. The Saudi-led air campaign is both causing inordinate civilian casualties in Yemen and not doing much to counter the active ISIS or Al Qaeda branches in the country. Senator Murphy discusses how this legislation hopes to reign in Saudi Arabia's military campaign, which in the view of Senator Murphy is becoming increasingly inimical to American interests. Our discussion of Yemen leads to an extended conversation about the US-Saudi alliance, the terms of which Murphy is very transparently trying to change from his perch in the Senate. We recorded this conversation before the US Senate voted, unanimously, on May 17th, to enable the family members of 9-11 victims to possibly sue the kingdom of Saudi Arabia for any potential liability they may hold--a move which was opposed by the White House. But I do think this conversation helps set the context for that vote. Senator Murphy is a Connecticut Democrat on the progressive end of the spectrum, who has launched a website, chanceforpeace.org in which he's attempting to fundamentally shift the terms of the national security conversation in DC. The Saudi arms sales legislation seems to be one manifestation of his foreign policy vision. Foreign policy watchers will be interested in hearing Senator Murphy's critique of US middle east policy. And for international relations students out there, this conversation offers a fascinating insight into how individual legislatures can influence US foreign policy.

Calestous Juma is a prolific author who focuses on the intersection of society, science and international development. He is a professor and director of the Science, Technology and Globalization project at the Belfer Center for Science and International affairs at Harvard. Calestous grew up in flood prone village on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya and in this episode he describes how his upbringing inspired his interest in understanding the relationship between nature, economic development, and technological change. We kick off discussing his forthcoming book, out in July, titled Innovation and Its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technologies--which includes, among other things, a fascinating discussion about what this history of margarine can teach us about the future of global development. This conversation was a delight, Calestous tells some great stories and offers some intriguing insights about trends in global development. And if you are not already, you should definitely follow him on twitter @Calestous. And I'm @MarkLGoldberg.

The international humanitarian system is stretched beyond capacity. In fact, it's fair to say it is broken. The inability of the international community to confront multiple manmade and natural disasters, like the crisis in Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, ebola in west Africa and the earthquake in Nepal is a profound contributor to insecurity around the world.There are more people displaced around the world than there has been at any time since World War Two; donors are not committing enough money to provide for the basic needs of people affected by sudden crises, and the international community is not doing a sufficient job of preventing the outbreak of conflict, ending current conflicts, or mitigating the effects of natural disasters. These failures and proposed solutions to these ongoing challenges are the subject of the first ever World Humanitarian Summit, which kicks off in Istanbul in mid May. This is a UN backed affair, which includes participation of member states, civil society and the private sector. And one participant is on the line with me today to discuss some of the problems and solutions that this conference hopes to address. Shannon Scribner is Oxfam America's Humanitarian Policy Manager, and in this conversation she offers an insightful preview of what to expect from this conference, some of the more controversial debates about the role of humanitarian relief and international development that this conference has already sparked, and how a first-ever world humanitarian summit can help mend a broken humanitarian system.

I caught up with my guest today, The US Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack just after he left the stage at the Climate Action Conference in DC. This was a two day UN backed conference with representatives from local and national governments, the business sector, civil society, NGOs and philanthropies gathered to discuss strategies to implement the Paris Agreement. Some quick background: the cornerstone of the Paris Climate Agreement are a set of commitments by each government to take certain actions or meet specific goals, and taken together these pledges can meaningfully alter the current climate change trajectory. That is, of course, if these commitments and pledges are actually implemented. And the point of this conference was to bring together stakeholders from disparate sectors to make the commitments of the Paris Accord a reality. Enter the US Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack. He details the specific actions that USDA is taking to implement the US government's commitments at Paris. And those are technically pretty interesting, but what I found enlightening in his comments is that it suggests there is a bureaucratic shift underway at USDA to mainstream climate imperatives throughout the department. This shift at USDA is likely one manifestation of a trend we are seeing throughout the US government in which the imperatives of confronting climate change are being mainstreamed throughout the whole of government. It's not just the EPA or department of energy or interior. Rather, every branch of government is taking this on in their own differentiated way. And that is, I think, a pretty interesting shift that we are living through.

Paul Niehaus is undertaking a radical experiment. His organization, Give Directly, wants to find out would happen if people living in extreme poverty were offered the guarantee of a basic income for ten to 15 years. They plan on launching an experiment in East Africa in which 6,000 people would be given, with no strings attached, enough money to pay for their basic needs over a long period of time. The idea they seek to test is called the Universal Basic Income. There are some communities around the world that offer this in some form, but never before has this idea been tested over an extended period of time in the developing world. Give Directly announced this new experiment a few weeks ago and it's caught the attention of the international development community and those of us in the media who follow these things. Paul explains what they hope to accomplish with this experiment, how it will actually work, and what implications it has for the global effort to combat extreme poverty.

Tom Nagorski is a longtime TV editor reporter and producer for ABC news and is currently an executive vice president at the Asia Society. Tom's career as a journalist spans some of the major world events of the last three decades, including the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its aftermath, the first Gulf War, the war in the Balkans, Somalia, the second Gulf War, and many many other events. We discuss what it was like reporting on these events and witnessing some world historic moments from behind the camera. This is a wide ranging conversation with Tom telling some fascinating stories from his career, but we kick off discussing the diplomatic relevance of Yao Ming, who was recently nominated for the NBA hall of fame. .

On the island of Hispaniola, which is shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti, there is an ongoing and overlooked human rights and humanitarian catastrophe. In recent years, the government of the Dominican Republic has taken measures to essentially strip ethnic Haitians of Dominican citizenship. New legal statutes have the potential to render about 500,000 people stateless. (For context and comparison's sake that is roughly the equivalent of the number of asylum applicants in Germany stemming from the Syrian refugee crisis) The roots of discrimination against Haitians in the Dominican Republic run deep, but these citizenship laws are relatively new. On the line with me to discuss this largely overlooked humanitarian crisis in the western hemisphere is human rights researcher Ryan Bacci. He explains the contours of these laws, their human rights and humanitarian implications on the ground, and offers some important historical context to understand how this kind of discrimination could be enshrined into a country's constitution.

Kevin Rudd is the former prime minister of Australia who knows China far better than most western leaders. He served from 2007 to 2010, and then again in 2013. These days, among other things, he's president of the Asia Society Policy Institute. I got to know the prime minister a little bit earlier this year when he moderated a panel on which I was a speaker. The panel was for the Independent Commission on Multilateralism which is putting together a set of policy recommendations for the next Secretary General. Rudd leads that commission and we kick off with a brief discussion about it hopes to accomplish before pivoting to longer conversation about Rudd's upbringing and career as a diplomat in the Australian foreign service. Kevin Rudd is a fluent mandarin speaker and he discusses how and why he became enthralled with China at a very young age. We discuss his first postings as young diplomat and how he decided to make the leap from diplomat to politician.